Issue Alignment and Partisanship in the American Public: Revisiting the "Partisans without Constraint" Thesis

• In Event: 2229 - Section on Political Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Political Sociology Refereed Roundtable #9

Abstract

In an influential article published in the American Journal of Sociology, Baldassarri and Gelman (2008) provide a provocative assessment of American political polarization. Using ANES data from 1972 and 2004, they show that "partisan alignment" – the correlation of party identification with issue attitudes – rose substantially during this period, but "issue alignment" – the correlation between pairs of issues – remained low. Taken together, these findings suggest that the public sorted themselves into partisan groups while remaining largely non-ideological. We replicate Baldassarri and Gelman’s modeling strategy, but expand the time series to include three more recent ANES waves to identify important developments in these trends. We show that partisan alignment grew between 2004 and 2016 at an accelerated pace, but more strikingly, we also find a substantial increase in issue alignment in recent years. These updated finding suggest that Converse’s longstanding dictum that the public is "innocent of ideology" may require revision for the contemporary electorate.

Authors

• Austin Kozlowski, University of Chicago

• James Murphy, The University of Chicago